I can understand the use of a preturn when you are initiating the first turn, a fast and easy way to get the feet out to the side, but why would you need to do it when you already have a previous turn?

BUTTINSKI If you have doubts your turns are probably not Automatic Turns. The turn that the Lady was referring to was probably the " diverging parallel. You should go back to the beginner Automatic Wedge Turn. You will be trying to discover the countersteering force. At slow speed it is weak and easly missed. To tesch yourself the Automatic Wedge Turn, choose a very gentle ,almost flat,smooth groomed slope. Start out at slow speed in a shallow traverse in a wedge. Simply look dounhill toward your next turnin a natural way and then countersteer by both feet forward a few inches away from and to the outside of the forthcoming turn.You will unweight the skis automatically and turn downhill into the fall line as if by magic! You shoud that the turn is auomatic from any downhill traverse including the fall line. TO turn out of the fall line you would push your skis a few inches forward in the opposite [counter] direction.IF you let nature take its course you will turn otn of the fall lin as if by magic. Itis not easy to learn to learn how to let nature take its course,especially for experienced skiers. They initially interrupt nature and abort the forthcming Automatic Turn. They must somehow must be convinced to keep trying and in due time the usually learn to tu automatically. When you accomplish the Automatic Wedge Turn, your turns will begin to take on an athletic and relaxed look and you will start skiing faster. The wedge becmes smaller and quite naturally disappears as speed increases. In short order you are skiin parallel on " friendly" smoth grommed slopes. IT is not necessary to try to guide your skis in order to ski parallel. That happens baturally if you are skiig fast enough.Above a certain speed a skier just naturallyskis parallel,but b elow that speed it is natural that the skis tend to form a wedge upon entering the fall line and then return to a parallel relationhip to finish the turn. B elow that speed, and its really quit slow, the skis tend to remain in a wedge. HOPE THIS HELPS. .

Well well--finally! JBHarstad--THANK YOU for posting that video. I really appreciate it, and it helps make sense of some of what has sounded like contradictions in your verbal descriptions.

I do think you're onto something, and you've made an observation about good skiing that is often missed, even by some high-end instructors. As I suspected, I think your observation of the "forward" movement of the feet in the transition (relative to the body, and across the hill) has some validity to it. And you are right, too, that it is a stark contrast from the "pull your feet back" or "push your hips forward" to start the turn school of thought that is not uncommon--and with which I also share your reservations.

I think you'd gain more traction if you did not try to portray it as "iconoclastic" or any of the other bombastic hyperbole you've used. It is enlightened, but not completely unique and certainly not unknown. I submit that you have been trying to describe something that has actually been very much discussed here over the years--the "X-Move" (my term), the "foot squirt" (Epic's term), the "Jet Turn" (commonly attributed to Ingemar Stenmark), the apparent "back seat driving" of Bode Miller and others, and more. Welcome to the club!

That said, I still do have some reservations about your learning progression. And I think that some tweaks of the timing, the direction, and the source of the movements you demonstrate in the video are in the cards. But again, I think you are absolutely on the right track.
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Maybe when I'm bored, I'll remember to do some wedge turns across the hill just for grins.

But the other non trainwreck thread about Cross Under vs Cross Over really cinched it down for me.

Yesterday I was mixing and matching the two styles, and the clarity of how they work, the ramifications of the energy levels used, and their overall polarity while not enlarging my bag of tricks definitely puts each trick in a more defined niche.

Good luck with your endeavors, I do hope you can get many skiers crossing under AND knowing the difference, the world will be a better place.

Yes JB, thanks for sharing your video with us! I believe, as Bob suggests, that you have begun to grasp a concept, though perhaps a bit rough around the edges, which has been shared here before under different banners and tact.

I looked for the counter rotation you suggested was necessary but failed to see it in your demonstrations? In your lower level demos I saw down stems and heel pushes and rotation, but as you progressed to more parallel turning it became less evident. I believe if your focus was more of a "release of the edge and relaxation of the legs" to permit the feet to move under and ahead as your CoM passes over your skis toward establishing a new platform, the outcome would become more fluid and less contrived.

Judging from your equipment in the video it looks as though you have been promoting this turn for a long time? Over thirty years perhaps?

So I ran into Jeff Bergeron today and he was kind enough to point out a flaw in my skiing and help me correct it. In the process he may well have added the final piece to the puzzle that will hopefully enable me to become a truly ripping skier. I was certainly killing it after he gave me his lesson.

A month or so ago, I had a lesson and learned about fore-aft balance (along with the fact that I was never using the front of the ski because I never moved forward of center). I learned how to pull my skis back in transition and get forward to start the turn. This made a huge difference in my skiing because it allowed me to start using the top of the turn for speed control.

Today Jeff looked at my skiing and said, "your timing is off". What he taught me to do was to let my skis run away from me through transition (diverge from my cm) instead of trying to pull them back right away. Effectively, the turn would finish well on the tails, but because it was combined with a retraction release I was essentially weightless in that position and not using any effort. Anyway, as the skis diverge, the released forces from the previous turn pull you into the next (this is conventional retraction), but because the old stance leg is cleared out of the way, the hip can drop fully into the turn. As in a more conventional retraction turn, you tip your skis off edge, through neutral and into the new turn. There are a lot of moving parts here, but essentially what happens is that right about the time the legs are fully extended, the tip of the ski hooks up and starts to engage, at which point you pull back slightly and you end up forward balanced, fully engaged (assuming you intentionally tipped enough to make that happen), with maximum angles--all at the top of the turn. Basically your CM cut the corner on the path your skis took so it could "catch up". One thing that is interesting is that you actually rotate just a hair. This is because you are working the back of the ski the whole time you are tipping and the rotation is what allows this to work.

Bob Barnes has talked about this move a lot, and prior to today, I would have thought I was doing it. Wrong! This is not your father's retraction turn. This is the turn you see the U.S. Ski Team athletes doing (and the reason for all of the "Ligety is in the backseat" threads).

The effect that this change had on my skiing was incredible. The amount of float that you get at transition when you do this right is amazing. Suddenly, you no longer worry about charging things because you know you'll have time to deal with whatever comes up. I went flying over a rollover into unexpected bumps (well Ok, they should have been expected, but hey I was having to much fun to pay attention). Normally, this would have been a gut check for me, but not now. I just absorbed the first two bumps, set up for a turn and figured out my line while I hung there. For high level skiers, this movement is so huge. It's literally like hitting the pause button on a video game. You get to play with time.

So the moral of this story is, the next time Bob starts talking about convergence/divergence PAY ATTENTION!!! I seem to remember a few folks "pooh poohing" this idea when I was trying to explain it (when I thought I was doing it). Well look out, I'm on my way to owning this move and I can tell you that it is very real and it can make your skiing great.

So, at the risk of interrupting the instructors' discussion, would you call that actively retracting the legs? I've been doing a thing where my hip dropping at 'extension' (to the degree I extend) seems to be what gets the skis to come back to the transition without me thinking about edges or angles or even skis. That's what it feels like, anyway.

I have a feeling that for learning skiers like us, the approach that makes the difference is the one that improves whatever was missing or twisted in our form, which isn't necessarily the same for you or me. Still, I'm curious.

So, at the risk of interrupting the instructors' discussion, would you call that actively retracting the legs? I've been doing a thing where my hip dropping at 'extension' (to the degree I extend) seems to be what gets the skis to come back to the transition without me thinking about edges or angles or even skis. That's what it feels like, anyway.I have a feeling that for learning skiers like us, the approach that makes the difference is the one that improves whatever was missing or twisted in our form, which isn't necessarily the same for you or me. Still, I'm curious.

This is a great observation litterbug and I couldn't agree more! I believe this holds true for the most seasoned veterans too! Those epiphanies can happen when you hear something explained in a different way or feel something in your skiing that suddenly clicks with what you had heard some time earlier.

Be careful with "dropping the hips" as this doesn't sound like a particularly good thing? and when you say "to the degree I extend" it makes me think there may be an equipment issue preventing you from more fully extending? This isn't the thread for this but your inquisitive post and the descriptives you are using makes me want to see what is going on and if we can help to steer your ship in the right direction!? Perhaps a video post of your skiing here if you are so inclined would help?

By dropping the hip I meant angulating as my legs extend out to the apex of the turn. I tend to get into trouble by keeping my torso and hips stiff, and for some reason the thought of "dropping" reminds me to loosen up, and to connect and work dynamically with gravity instead of stiffening up and trying to muscle things around. So there's no actual dropping or tipping or anything like that going on at all, just my skis/legs leaving and returning to center in that really cool figure 8.

As for extension, I think I simply misspoke. My legs do extend fully, but at relatively slow speeds and gentle slopes, the less acute angulation makes my skis seem, well, less far away from me. I was starting to get into these same movements on steeper bits last week, which means (I think) more angular angles, but the lack of thigh burn (thanks, Earl!) asked my fatigue to sneak up on me, and I had to retreat to lower ground before I got into a 'one run too many' situation.

That being said, I have absolutely no idea whether any of this translates into something useful. I've actually been avoiding getting engaged with instruction threads so as to get away from being all up in my head about skiing. There's so much fascinating tech talk here by some pretty engaging and articulate people, but too much cogitating and I'll be a mess again.

Speaking of which, I need to make a date with my instructor very soon, before I get to many ideas. She seems pretty good at getting me out of my head and into the present on the snow. So rather than asking for MA here, I'll go the in-the-flesh route. Besides, I'm camera shy.

Sorry, I hit Submit prematurely.
By dropping the hip I meant angulating as my legs extend out to the apex of the turn. I tend to get into trouble by keeping my torso and hips stiff, and for some reason the thought of "dropping" reminds me to loosen up, and to connect and work dynamically with gravity instead of stiffening up and trying to muscle things around. So there's no actual dropping or tipping or anything like that going on at all, just my skis/legs leaving and returning to center in that really cool figure 8.

Dont apologise. I actuallly use the exact phrase "drop you hips...as you move to the end of the turn", in many of my highend lessons, to combat the very issue you raised. As you wrote, it might not be an accurate description of what is really happening, but for many people it sends the right mental clue to get the desired outcome. It works particularily well for high end skiers moving to steep terrain,...as they tend to get stiff and just block things up, or get so far forward they are almost going over the handlbars at the end of each turn.

If it works for you....do it.

I assure you, having someone say "I am gonna adjust your delta in a minute", doesnt sound good either...but people come from far and wide and pay good money to have Bud do just that....it dont matter what it sounds like, what matters is the results.

I'm sorry - are you guys kidding? That is really bad skiing in that video. In the advanced turn, he is just shuffling... I guess you could call it counter-steering in the sense that it throws the body out of balance and the cat in your brain twists the body so it doesn't fall!

Bob, that should not be on the same page with a WC photo...

Bud - there is nothing similar about the two: from geoffda's description, he is clearly engaging a carved arc with the top of the ski while the guy in the video was not carving at any point and cannot discover what lies above the fall line with those skis and that skiing...

Sorry - i'm new here and i can't quite tell if this is a halloween joke or not... I don't know if it's the snow conditions, which are bad, the skis which are old or the skier, but i mean c'mon...

I'm sorry - are you guys kidding? That is really bad skiing in that video. In the advanced turn, he is just shuffling... I guess you could call it counter-steering in the sense that it throws the body out of balance and the cat in your brain twists the body so it doesn't fall!
Bob, that should not be on the same page with a WC photo...
Bud - there is nothing similar about the two: from geoffda's description, he is clearly engaging a carved arc with the top of the ski while the guy in the video was not carving at any point and cannot discover what lies above the fall line with those skis and that skiing...
Sorry - i'm new here and i can't quite tell if this is a halloween joke or not... I don't know if it's the snow conditions, which are bad, the skis which are old or the skier, but i mean c'mon...
Cheers,
Razie

Welcome to the jungle!

Epic is full of double standards and general douche baggery.

For example it is fully acceptable to openly bag "Nailbender", a guy who while not as knowledgable as he thinks....certainly has forgotten far more about skiing then JB will ever know....yet JB, as rude, clueless and lost as he is, gets full patientce and respect for concepts that could only be described as ridiculous. Its EPIC at its finest!

I have looked at the second video as well to be fair on YouTube. Here are my observations.

1. You are skiing with straight skis, and most of the video is actual old footage. Post some the pics on Retro memories thread

2. I remember doing those type of turns when I was between the ages of 5 through 12 (from plow to parallel, early mid 70's). The reason I remember, is I got a ski pole across the butt every time I did it, because I was steering with the butt, not carving in the sense that should be taught. Yes it easier but sets up the balance wrong. (yes my dad was a tough task master on skiing and by 15 I was skiing better then he was and still improving).

3. Looking at the second video, you also notice that inside ski, rear inside edge is dragged. In additional that skier is also sitting back as they push the ski forward. I fear that if this is done with modern shapes skis and pulling the turn around by sitting back you are going to inadvertently induce ACL injures just because of the position and loading and terrain conditions. (this identical posture is used in the KneeBinding infomercials why KneeBindings work, obviously a little more extreme).

4. Another telling point is when looking at how the snow comes off the ski in the turns, the snow primarily coming from the back of the ski so this even indicates that the skier is NOT BALANCED naturally.

Having just switched (straight to shaped) I can say I can pull this type of turn with straight skis very easily (not great turns because the skis is not carved but pivoted), but very honestly with the shaped skis I would be very scared of teaching anyone for fear that they will tear an ACL. I would be hesitant in trying (with shaped skis) even though I ski well as I fully realize that this is a path to injury.

Agree or disagree, review both videos and think again.

I know by this posting I'm going to take some heat. But, I value my knees!

For example it is fully acceptable to openly bag "Nailbender", a guy who while not as knowledgable as he thinks....certainly has forgotten far more about skiing then JB will ever know....yet JB, as rude, clueless and lost as he is, gets full patientce and respect for concepts that could only be described as ridiculous. Its EPIC at its finest!

I believe what we are trying to accomplish is rather than offend someone who perhaps has good intent but is simply a bit clueless, help them discover a better understanding and to better communicate their message VS. supporting a message that is truly clueless. One perhaps has a hidden gem the other not so much. There are plenty of rude self pontificating people here who tend to chase people away. Perhaps the idea is to be a softer gentler place to share ideas? If one has an open mind they may learn but if one is dogmatic and stubborn they may meet with resistance? While it would be quite easy to view JB's video and jump on him about a whole list of shortcomings, the more challenging noble thing to do is try to find the good and shape his message to make more sense for all?

I believe what we are trying to accomplish is rather than offend someone who perhaps has good intent but is simply a bit clueless, help them discover a better understanding and to better communicate their message VS. supporting a message that is truly clueless. One perhaps has a hidden gem the other not so much. There are plenty of rude self pontificating people here who tend to chase people away. Perhaps the idea is to be a softer gentler place to share ideas? If one has an open mind they may learn but if one is dogmatic and stubborn they may meet with resistance? While it would be quite easy to view JB's video and jump on him about a whole list of shortcomings, the more challenging noble thing to do is try to find the good and shape his message to make more sense for all?

Well put Bud - so why isnt Nailbender afforded the same?

I think it is kinda weird that we take the softly softly approach with some, and not others. Nailbender's (while I dont agree with much of it) ideas have far more merit then anything JB has posted, Nails self videos have showed a much higher level of skiing ability then JB and he certainly has been no more rude or condesending then JB is. And of course there are far more "infamous" examples of people who are no longer here......why the double standard?

I think it is kinda weird that we take the softly softly approach with some, and not others. Nailbender's (while I dont agree with much of it) ideas have far more merit then anything JB has posted, Nails self videos have showed a much higher level of skiing ability then JB and he certainly has been no more rude or condesending then JB is. And of course there are far more "infamous" examples of people who are no longer here......why the double standard?

Not sure where that leaves me... I didn't call it 'clueless' or anything, just called the skiing as bad in the specific video (which it is, for whatever reason of many) and wondered if you were joking, comparing it to WC photos of a guy late in some gates or pure high-performance carving above the fall line, described by the other guy you quoted...

Sorry - but the only reason I went and read this entire thread was because I saw that quote from geoffda which you posted, which was interesting indeed, about timing the re-centering... but then surprise, surprise... it was about something totally different.

Yes JB, thanks for sharing your video with us! I believe, as Bob suggests, that you have begun to grasp a concept, though perhaps a bit rough around the edges, which has been shared here before under different banners and tact.

I looked for the counter rotation you suggested was necessary but failed to see it in your demonstrations? In your lower level demos I saw down stems and heel pushes and rotation, but as you progressed to more parallel turning it became less evident. I believe if your focus was more of a "release of the edge and relaxation of the legs" to permit the feet to move under and ahead as your CoM passes over your skis toward establishing a new platform, the outcome would become more fluid and less contrived.

Judging from your equipment in the video it looks as though you have been promoting this turn for a long time? Over thirty years perhaps?

Great observations BUD. The date of the vieo was 04/28/1993 at Snowbird,Utah. You did not see counterrotation because there isnt any! The turning force is called countersteering, the same force motorcyclits use to turn quickly and automatically. I was wrong in video to call it countrotation. I should mute that. If the turn is not started by coutersteering it cant be an Automatic Turn. Countersteering as aforce in sking is hard to find. It is my belief that you will never find it unless you know it is there. Thats my experience. REGARDS, Bruce

Thanks for reminding me - the other reason i read the thread is because I am an avid motorcycle racer as well, on road but lately more off-road and you mentioned counter-steering.

The only thing close to counter-steering i have encountered in skiing though is moving your body down the fall line while the skis cross sideways, in transition, in SL and the "von Gruningen" or "HH weighted release" in GS. I can assure you the forces experienced in those two situations at high speeds or steeps are something to bring a big smile.

I haven't seen any of that in your video though.

For counter-steering to work, traction is a must, i.e. a carve, holding an edge of some kind.

Thanks for reminding me - the other reason i read the thread is because I am an avid motorcycle racer as well, on road but lately more off-road and you mentioned counter-steering.
The only thing close to counter-steering i have encountered in skiing though is moving your body down the fall line while the skis cross sideways, in transition, in SL and the "von Gruningen" or "HH weighted release" in GS. I can assure you the forces experienced in those two situations at high speeds or steeps are something to bring a big smile.
I haven't seen any of that in your video though.
For counter-steering to work, traction is a must, i.e. a carve, holding an edge of some kind.

Well further, the anology doesnt hold, as you only countersteer motorbikes to make a turn from a straight....you do it to get the mass of the bike moving in the right direction...however if you just finished a turn on a bike, you dont countersteer, as the bikes mass is already moving into the new turn....same in skiing, as you finish one turn, the mass is already moving into the new one, so no countersteer is required.

It may surprise you, but the way to get the bike upright from the last turn and throw it into the next is counter-steering. Sure, you can weight the outside peg or shift your body or a number of things, but primarily CS.

The physics of it is relative to you current stable situation and while hanging off through the apex, the combined force vector goes through the wheels... Push it more and it gets upright and throws you over... Just like in skiing